To mark its 10th anniversary, Drug Discovery & Development magazine invited industry vendors to reflect on the history and made predictions about future of the industry. Featured here are verbatim comments from this company.
Artel
Headquarters
Westbrook, Maine
Spokesperson
Kirby Pilcher, President
Web site
About the company
Liquid handling pervades drug research laboratories. Artel’s mission is to help these laboratories optimize their liquid handling tools and techniques and achieve significant improvements in productivity. Using ultra-sensitive photometric technology with nanoliter sensitivity, the MVS® Multichannel Verification System ensures data integrity in processes utilizing automated liquid handlers. Based on the same core technology, the PCS® Pipette Calibration System is used in thousands of laboratories worldwide. Artel has introduced the first elements of its Liquid Handling Quality Assurance Services: On-site performance verification for automated liquid handlers, and the industry’s most rigorous certification training for the use and QC of hand-held pipettes.
The company’s line of business as it was 10 years ago. Changes in life science/drug research that influenced business.
Ten years ago Artel was engaged in providing its proprietary volume measurement systems for customers who wanted a robust and easy-to-use, yet accurate and precise means of ensuring regulatory compliance and data integrity with their hand-held pipettes.
Today, much has changed. Pipettes remain essential liquid handling tools, but automated liquid handlers using nanoliter volumes have become widespread and are a significant part of the life science research landscape. Cost pressures render laboratory productivity increasingly critical. Additionally, many laboratories are less inclined to verify and calibrate their instrumentation themselves, so services have become the fastest growing part of our business.
Scientific challenges in the next 10 years.
In the next 10 years, as a tool maker whose mission is to maximize laboratory productivity, through advances in liquid handling and quality assurance, we will face a direct reflection of the scientific challenges faced by our customers. Our goal will continue to be to provide our customers with confidence in their analytical results. For instance, how can very minute liquid volumes be reliably handled and measured? Or, how can the accuracy and precision of liquid transfer processes be assessed in real time? Additionally, how can the immense amounts of data resulting from these processes be efficiently utilized? Finally, how can the management of an increasingly sophisticated network of liquid handling procedures be made intuitive and error-free, and hence reduce the risks to data integrity due to over-complexity?
Factor(s) that drove the development of technologies during the last 10 years and greatest area of growths.
The use of microtiter plates and higher density platforms has created demand for liquid handling quality assurance in 96, 386 and 1534 well formats. In addition, the expansion of research and development activities across numerous laboratories, as well as regulatory scrutiny and good science, drive the preference for repeatable and traceable measurements. For example, one microliter as delivered at a manufacturing QC lab in Ireland must be precisely the same as the one microliter measured at a development lab in the United States. This demand for standardized volume measurement in higher density formats drove the development and growth of Artel’s MVS Multichannel Verification System. The trend towards outsourcing specialized service functions has driven demand for rugged and portable liquid handling QC systems robust enough to operate in all sorts of laboratory environments. Artel’s core technology is ideal for this application, and has catalyzed our growth into on-site quality assurance services.
Bold Prediction: Where will drug research technology be in 10 years?
Evidence points to the next 10 years showing an acceleration of the trends we are now witnessing. The major pharmaceutical firms will narrow their focus of operations while increasingly outsourcing research programs. The pressures of competition will encourage these contract research specialists to demonstrate nimble application of the most appropriate technology for the research task at hand, and we will see utilization of highly quantitative methods with greater precision and improved data quality earlier in the research process. The net result will be improved productivity, and a faster and more efficient development cycle.
